Mayor Giuliani yesterday bashed President Clinton for cutting funding to the military, saying he is leaving the nation’s armed forces “weaker than he found it.”

“I think that this president will be the first president in a long time that hands America over weaker than he found it – from the point of view of our foreign policy and our military,” Giuliani told a group of Holy Cross College alumni.

“A president should never let that happen,” Giuliani told the audience of 100 over breakfast in the Met Life Building in Midtown.

“You have a military that’s underpaid, low morale, losing people, not able to keep qualified people and … I think the next president – and the Congress – is going to have to rebuild that,” the mayor said.

“We did in the ’90s what we did in the ’30s … We decided to take a peace dividend.”

White House spokesman Jake Siewert fired back at Giuliani.

“On any day, the mayor’s comments would have been inaccurate,” Siewert said.

“On a day when the president was congratulating troops for a successful mission in the Balkans, they are also entirely inappropriate.”

Siewert said that in January, Clinton proposed spending an additional $112 billion over the next six years on troop readiness.

It was the second time in two weeks the mayor has attacked Clinton on foreign policy.

As the peace settlement in Kosovo was announced last week, Giuliani was less than enthusiastic over the accord.

“I think the lack of focus on what went on there meant many, many days and months of indecision and loss of life,” Giuliani said.